Driven largely by smart phones, tablets, video streaming, cloud-based networking, etc., the amount of data handled by datacenter and service provider networks has risen markedly and is expected to continue to rise by orders of magnitude over the next ten years. In addition to the sheer volume of data, the number of devices is expected to continue to grow exponentially, possibly reaching into the billions of devices, along with radically higher data rates. Different applications will place different requirements on the performance of future networks. Future networks are expected to be highly flexible, highly efficient, open, and customizable for customers and consumers.
The advent of cloud-based networking has complicated the ability of future networks to satisfy expected demands for higher throughput, lower latencies, lower energy, lower costs, and drastically more numerous connections. Cloud-based networking fundamentally redefines the endpoints and the time frame for which network services are provisioned. It requires the network be much more nimble, flexible, and scalable. Thus, technologies such as network function virtualization (NFV) and SDNs have become increasingly important in building future networks. SDNs allow the abstraction of network capabilities and resources. The network capabilities and resources can then be provisioned according to service-oriented policies for customers and users.